Land Reform Meeting Chiang Mai

When I was leaving the land reform meeting this afternoon, Pet said, "I told you the meetings were a waste of your time." The meeting was tedious, but not a waste. I don't quite know what was all going on. But being there at all, gave me lots of leads for questions to ask, though there isn't much time left. Farmers were there from the three different villages I've been to, so presumably from all the others as well.

The Thai word for information was said over and over and over again. But essentially, my understanding was like the Thai translation in the previous post. I knew a lot of the words, but not quite how they connected. Today was the time for the farmers to talk about their issue and the various organizations supporting the farmers also contributed.


The man on the left is the villager whose house I stayed at when I first went out to a village. The man on the left was the main village speaker at the land reform confrontation in Lamphun.



Anyone recognize this speaker? He was the man at the Fire Break Ceremony who taught us how to say hello in Karen.


The meeting was in the Best Western Hotel, so in a sense, I felt like I wasn't quite in Thai territory any more, though it was still Thai, especially the flower arrangments and the food. We were on the top floor and so I got some views of places I've been in, but never seen from above. And it was pretty clear so the mountains were very visible too.


I left a little before 5pm. It wasn't a waste of time. I have a list of questions, plus I got to connect with people I'd met before. DeLak and Kaew got to see the photos and videos I took in their villages. And some Alaska pictures. But Pet was right - the meetings could be much livlier and have a lot more participation. (Though there was a lot of opportunities to speak, there were also talking heads.) My foot was better than it had been during the night and at the airport, but I thought it was time (since there are only two days left) to get a foot massage at Wat Umong, which I pass everytday. On the way back from the hotel (only about a quarter of a mile past our office, I ran into these cows, something that has never happened before. The massage, I was told, was the best in Chiang Mai. So maybe the could fix my foot.
I told her in detail about my foot. She immediately attacked my foot and I was in great pain. This was either going to cure me or leave me permantly limping.

The right foot also hurt as did various other places on my body. When it was over she asked how it was and I could walk much easier. But a few hours later is was probably a mistake. My foot is now noticeably swollen, though I'm walking slowly, but better than before.

I'm discovering how important my feet are. And sleep too, I'll add the links in the morning.

J's Gone, two more work days

Some of the office folks took us to dinner last night, then Pet and Ew picked us up at 4:45am to get J to the airport in time for her 7am flight. [Mook, sorry I forgot to call yesterday morning , things got really rushed.] It was the first flight listed on the board and they didn't open the checkin until 5:45am. I really felt bad people had gotten up so early and then we had to wait. Meanwhile, I did something to my left foot and it was hard to walk on. But I don't think it's too serious. Nothing swollen, nothing red, nothing hot. Just hurts on the bottom when I walk. Ice this morning when I got back helped.

Some people at the office today are going to Presentation training. And there is another meeting on land reform at the Best Western Hotel near the office. I'm going to that one. Bon and I did more translation yesterday afternoon. It's really hard. The translator basically looked up words in a dictionary and put them together. Bon had to explain the Thai to me and I had to ask lots of questions before we agreed on what it should say. We ended up deciding to try to capture the meaning more than the way it was said. There's no way I could have come anywhere close without Bon. Still don't know how close it is. There are about 20 pages. I'm not going to finish this task. But I reassured them that the person they got to translate something else had done a very good job and they should go with that person to finish this.

Original Thai:
3.2) พระราชบัญญัติป่าชุมชน ที่ผ่านความเห็นชอบจากสภานิติบัญญัติแห่งชาติ ซึ่งมีเนื้อหาที่ไม่เอื้อต่อการจัดการและการใช้ประโยชน์จากป่าของชุมชน อีกทั้งยังลิดรอนสิทธิเสรีภาพของชุมชนท้องถิ่น ที่ได้รับการคุ้มครองจากรัฐธรรมนูญในการเข้าไปดูแลรักษาและใช้ประโยชน์จากทรัพยากร ตามบทบัญญัติมาตรา 66 ของรัฐธรรมนูญแห่งราชอาณาจักรไทย พ.ศ.2550 ปัจจุบันอยู่ในระหว่างการพิจารณาของศาลรัฐธรรมนูญว่าจะขัดต่อรัฐธรรมนูญหรือไม่

Translator's version:
3.2) The Community Forest Royal Act is approved from the Legislative Assembly. The content is not contributed for management and advantage from the community forest But it is deprived right liberty of local community. The constitution has protected in take care and take advantage from the resources follow by sector 66 of the provision under the Kingdom of Thailand Constitution 2007. Now is during the commitment of constitution court that is against the constitution or not. [This is one of the better sections. You can see why I couldn't just proof the translation.]

Our version:
3.2) The Community Forest Royal Act was approved by the Legislative Assembly. This law, concerning the management of forest land, is detrimental to the rights of farmers living in the forest. This appears to be in conflict with section 66 of the 2007 Constitution. The courts are deciding this question now.

Thai Activist Media Website Supporting Alaskan Cause

One of the organizations at my compound, Local Talk, works to increase the coverage of local community issues in the media. I wrote earlier about proofing the English version of their report of a program that taught youth how to be reporters and to report on their communities.

One of my projects here in my final days has been to develop a directory of the organizations and people who work in this compound. In doing that, I learned that some of the organizations have websites. Local Talk's website posts local stories, but they also fill up space with stories from elsewhere. Looking on their site today, I found this story about the problems with farmed salmon, an issue that nearly all Alaskans would agree on. (How many others could we find?)

This is a small world and everything is connected.

Chiang Mai/Fairbanks Lemon Grass Connection

J2, the film editor (end of linked post), suggested we meet at a restaurant near her place - the Lemon Grass. The waiter's English was, literally, remarkable. I was wondering if he was even Thai. English is hard for Thais - they put tones on individual syllables, while English tones are related to the whole sentence (questions rise at the end, for example); Thai words can end in only nine final consonant sounds (or vowel sounds), so English final sounds are a real challenge. But this guy's English was almost Native level.

Finally I asked him why it was so good. Turns out Gaw (my spelling) lived in Fairbanks where his dad went looking for gold and he'd had two years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His dad runs the Lemon Grass restaurant in Fairbanks, Our waiter was also the owner of the Chiang Mai Lemon Grass.

We also had a good talk with J2 who will be going back to LA in mid May.

Two and a Half Months is a Long Short Time

Green leaves have replaced the giant dead ones on the teak trees
Trees full of bright orange and yellow flowers have repainted the landscape
Strangers are now acquaintances and friends
Words I didn't know, now sometimes roll off my tongue
Sometimes I drag them slowly and painfully from their braincelly hiding places
I know how to get the ice and water in various restaurants
Strange streets are now familiar

But many new questions replaced the ones that got answered or forgotten
The comfortable temperatures of February are gone and even the Thais are hot

The cool dry season has become the hot dry season
But tonight's thunderstorm which has cut our electricity
And washed our streets, foretells more to come.

Drongos and coucals are now familiar friends
As are the man at the fruit stand and various shop keepers and servers
The bats that greeted us our first nights have long departed

A strange collection of buildings and people now all have names
As do things like Khao Soi and Wats Umong and Padaeng
My colleagues have taught me a lot and I hope I've left them with
a few new ideas as well.

And my old sandals, with the holey soles, will stay behind
And new ones will accompany me home.

Two and a half months is a long short time.

The Owl and the Lizards

J spotted an owl outside our window this morning and I got there in time to see it fly off. We think it might be a collared owlet, but aren't really sure.

Coming back from lunch this afternoon I saw Maya who is back from her trip to Madagascar. That's not a normal side trip from Thailand. She was a Peace Corps volunteer there and has gotten a job in the summer taking some high school kids there. So they flew her over to prepare. While we were talking I noticed a blue rubber lizard I hadn't seen before, on the tree next to us. But when I looked closer this bizarrely colored critter moved.

It was about a foot long.



As we followed him around to the other side of the tree, we found two more like this one.























A couple hours later we had a loud thunderstorm and I had to wait till the rain lightened considerably to ride home. But the temperature dropped 20˚F to 75.

Is China Ready for the Olympics?

This is NOT about China and human rights; that's been extensively covered. (Actually, not really. The protests about the torch relay has been covered, but the real issues haven't gotten that much attention. And they won't here today.)

My question is about whether China can handle all the foreigners who will descend on Beijing. When I taught in Beijing in 2004 I was impressed with how much had been prepared already for the Olympics. I'm talking about venues that were already built or being built back then. Though I wasn't impressed by the lack of consideration for pedestrians and traffic patterns as neighborhoods were leveled and huge housing developments were being put in.

But a new issue arose that raises other questions. We got J's Thailand ticket through mileage from United Airlines. Her return flight is Chiang Mai to Bangkok and Bankgok to Beijing on Thai International. Then Air China from Beijing to LA. (She'll get back to Anchorage on a separate Alaska ticket.)

So a couple of weeks ago I started trying to get her seat reservations on the return. United says to contact the partner airlines. Thai International was no problem. But the Air China part was. We could find her reservation, after some difficulty, on the Air China website, but there was no way to make the seat reservation.

I emailed and explained my problem. I got an email back a week later with two Beijing phone numbers to call. Luckily I have skype so it's reasonable. I got a recording on the first number. And the second number. They are open 8-5. It was 11am, but a Sunday. Monday I tried again. I got someone who gave me another phone number, and that was a recording. I tried both numbers several times and got recordings, but couldn't get people.

I emailed two former Chinese students who are at universities in the US. They both tried through Air China phone numbers in the US and were given the same number I had in Beijing that they couldn't get through to. Fortunately, one contacted another former student who is in Beijing who eventually was able to get through to someone who says J now has an aisle seat on that flight.

But if getting a seat assignment on the namesake airline of China is so difficult, this doesn't bode well. Their website also had special deals - except they were for 2007. And even though I chose the English option, when I got sent to the next page, it would sometimes change back into Chinese. I realize that frequent flier tickets are not the norm, but tickets issued by other carriers will be common for travelers to the Olympics. How will they handle this with phone numbers that don't work after 6pm or on weekends, or at all?

Is this an anomaly that means nothing? Or is this an early warning signal? Let's wait and see.

When Denial Ends

Phil at Alaska Progressive salutes Rich Mauer's ADN article on the Young-Abramoff connections today. Phil also talks about Dennis Greenia at Daily Kos whose been working on the Abromovff Scandal for a while now under the name Dengre and whose research has helped Phil in the past and Mauer in this new article.

Phil also links to an October 6, 2006 post he did on this topic covering much of the same ground.

All this relates to an important theme for me (see the name of this blog) - how people 'know' what they know. One wonders about the Alaskan voters who have elected and reelected Don Young all these years despite all the evidence that his response was to shout like a bully at anyone - including constituents - who asked questions about things like Abramoff and the Marianas.

Thomas Kuhn, the physicist who put the word 'paradigm' (see links to Kuhn in an earlier post) into the American mainstream, said that scientitists don't discard their old paradigms - even when they know they are faulty - until they have a better one to replace them with. I think that makes sense here.

I remember the evidence piling up that - despite his denial - Richard Nixon was a crook. Yet he was reelected for a second term. People didn't want to believe that there president was a crook. They didn't want to believe that Viet Nam was a mistake and that the great USA was on the wrong side and was losing. (Some people still think we could have won, whatever that means, but we were politically hampered. But looking back from today, we can see that the whole rationale of our being there - to keep the dominoes of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, etc. from falling to Communism - was a model of things that did not accurately reflect what was happening.) While there were questions about Nixon, their beliefs overall were being challenged and they didn't have another belief system to switch to.

So, it has taken a while for the American public to lose faith in George W. Bush.

And it seems like forever for Alaskans to lose faith in Don Young.

Radical Catholic Mom raises a point that I didn't think of this morning: the poisonous role on American politics of one issue voting blocks. In this case she cites the Right to Life over everything else crowd for helping to keep Young in power.

It goes to the heart of the whole "vote pro-life only" camp. I received an email ripping me one for even hinting that I could POSSIBLY argue for voting for a "pro-abort" candidate. I responded that it ain't black and white, honey. Don Young and other Republican corrupt, disgusting, anti-life politicians who shamefully used the pro-life vote to continue in office and push through this Mariana Islands deal where women were raped, again and again and again, forced to abort their babies, and then forced to make clothes for the US consumer reflect why the traditional pro-life vote needs to become CRITICAL. WHO are we electing?

If a group is so obsessed with one issue that they are willing to close their eyes to everything else a candidate might do if only he takes a strong stand on their issue, then we get politicians who use those voters to carry out their immoral actions.

The point for me is NOT Don Young, but how we help US citizens to

• understand how to critically evaluate candidates,
  
• critically evaluate interest groups that urge them to vote based on certain issues,
  
• see beyond the very short term simplistic promises to understand who they are really putting into power.

I think Alaskans have gotten the point on Don Young. They got the point on Frank Murkowski (who, by the way, gets points on his outraged reaction to the Marianas situation

Murkowski said, he "talked with some Bangladesh workers who had not been paid and who were living in appalling conditions." He also described a young woman taken to Saipan as a minor and forced to work as a prostitute. (from Mauer piece)

though he continued to publicly support Young and according to the Mauer article

Since leaving office, Murkowski has declined to talk about the Marianas issue.

Again, my point is NOT Young or Murkowski, my point is about how voters

• gather the information they use,
  
• how they analyze that information, and
  
• how they decide to vote.

Second Night Seder at Home

M had suggested a week or so ago that we do a second night seder and invite the AJWS staff members Grib and A and other friends. It seemed like having a seder in a restaurant would be difficult, so I asked at our place whether we could use the dining area and kitchen. They said sure.

Grib wasn't feeling well, but A was able to come as well as the Thais who'd taken M to their village last week. And W the new volunteer who just got here as well as two of the young men who were at last night's seder. I've never cooked in an industrial kitchen before and it was fun. We shopped yesterday at a couple of the University Vegetable markets and had lots of very fresh ingredients. The fuzziness of the wine bottle is due to high alcohol content of the bottle.


And T and J brought wine made from sticky rice and grapes. A taste, like asparagus, that you have to develop a taste for. It was a very enjoyable evening with people doing interesting things. It's too bad we're just about to leave. But we have an invitation from J2 to visit his elephants when we come back. And it was nice to know that we didn't have to wash all the dishes, though everyone helped get them into the kitchen and we got most of the gunk off of them.

Scarlet Backed Flowerpecker

I've had some video on this little, almost hummingbird like bird, that frequents our tree and has a little red splash. But couldn't figure out what it was. Friday I thought I'd figured it out. I got a great view of a little bird that made the same hummingbird like sounds and it matched the scarlet backed flowerpecker in the book perfectly. Can't see it? It's in the lower left. And this picture was already enlarged. It's a tiny bird that rarely stops moving.

The photographer me is battling the birder me about whether to even post this picture. But you can find incredible bird pictures all over the web. This one helps show how difficult those great pictures are. And you can tell that this is a scarlet backed flowerpecker (if you have other pictures and descriptions to compare it with.) But the descriptions I can find are not very detailed.


So, is the bird in the video also a scarlet backed flowerpecker? There doesn't seem to be red on the head and back, just the rump.Watch quickly, then again in slow motion.


I think it's the same bird, but I'm not sure.